Indigenous legal advocates in northwestern Ontario are sounding the alarm over the Ontario government’s cancellation of its contract with Starlink, citing concerns with people’s access to legal services in remote First Nations.
Last month, Premier Doug Ford announced he’d be ripping up the $100-million deal with Elon Musk’s internet provider, as a retaliatory measure in the ongoing Canada-U.S. trade war.
But in northwestern Ontario, this means the end of the Starlink-Navigator Program delivered by Nishnawbe-Aski Legal Services Corporation (NALSC), which “permitted community members, who often do not have access to internet, or reliable internet, an opportunity to participate in virtual courts.”
My bad. I guess I mixed this up with something else.
Even still, the bandwidth and latency of traditional satellite internet isn’t bad enough to be an issue for this. You can still stream with latency below 1s, more than enough for streaming, just not good enough for online games.
Besides, Xplore is a Canadian provider that does this already to service these areas specifically. Why go for a foreign provider when we have a perfectly serviceable local one for such a purpose? Yes, it’s not a great provider, but for this use case, it is good enough and doesn’t require giving a hundred million to a guy who’s helping to destroy this country.
Traditional geostationary satellite latency really causes problems with real time communication which this is trying to help with. You end up in a situation where you talk over each other frequently unless you go into radio style communication of always waiting for the other person to clearly be done talking with a long pause which hampers fluid conversations. Reactions to things you hear or say become delayed making for a jarring experience.
You can do it yes, but it’s subpar.
Edit: Imagine a lawyer not being able to interject properly during a court case or read non verbal queues of whats going on in court in real time.
I agree its subpar. But my question is, is the solution worth 1.5% the entire province’s budget?
Connecting these homes properly is worth it, yes.
The question was always is it worth giving it to SpaceX specifically given Elons ties, or a US based company due to Trump. Xplore is US owned as well now, and was the other option.
During the pandemic
I think we should try and avoid supporting the US for the moment, but if there isn’t a good alternative and the other options might seriously impact the quality of life for our citizens, then I think it’s worth considering still doing it until we can work something else out.
Edit: I thought this addition would be worth while… Xplore struggled during the pandemic when usage was higher, and starlink has much higher bandwidth capabilities. If we not only want to connect but encourage people to consider living in these communities, that also means more population growth, which means more demanding usage which means Xplore struggles further.
I see. Didn’t realize that Xplore wasn’t Canadian anymore, nor that actual performance was that bad. I just saw some speed tests and those didn’t look that bad.
That said, I still don’t think we should be spending $100 million on Starlink. For the purpose its suppose to serve, I would think that we could meet all the proposed needs with single digit million at most, even if we have to rely on Starlink to do so. We taxpayers are being shafted hard by such a contract.
If private individuals want to get Starlink for their normal internet, I don’t oppose such a decision since it’s not like we have good alternatives for high speed satellite internet until the EU’s version gets fully deployed. But that’s a decision on an individual level. A provincial decision should minimize excess expenditure on something that’s a pure luxury and instead concentrate on meeting the needs of its people first, since Ford is already pulling so much funding from public resources to pay for his vanity projects that keep getting rejected by the courts.
I don’t know all the costs, but definitely not single digits.
15,000 (people) * 500 (dish) + 15000 * 140 (service) * 12 (months) is 37.2 million. If they help with roof installs that’d be more too.
Commercial stuff costs more, so if they connect a hospital it’d be more.
There was something in the contract about paying more to ensure guaranteed bandwidth for them as well, and I wonder if the government is helping pay for some of the ground stations it’d need which might be one time costs?
Also the government has a policy of connecting all of Canada to high speed internet which is considered 50 down, 10 up with 98% in 2026 and the rest by 2030.
https://ised-isde.canada.ca/site/high-speed-internet-canada/en
Edit: to be fair though that policy isn’t about paying for the end user, but it would include going towards infrastructure like ground stations, guaranteeing the bandwidth and paying for SpaceX to launch a few extra satellites to help guarantee the service.